revolution3
by minmb82
Summary: revolution3


**Chapter 3**

_Brista,15 Kedaa, 4405, Faey Orthodox Calendar_

_ Monday, 28 April 2019 Terran Standard Calendar_

_ Brista, 15 Kedaa, year 1330 of the 97__th__ Generation, Karinne Historical Reference Calendar_

_Karinne Family Retreat, Tir Tairngire _

This was _exactly_ what he needed.

Laying back in a lounger by the pool, hands behind his head and ankles crossed, Jason had his eyes closed and was drifting in and out of a doze as family and friends laughed and played all around him. The vacation house on Tir Tairngire was almost completely full, so full that not everyone had a bedroom, and the compound hadn't seen this kind of activity since Meya and Jenn's wedding. All of his kids were here, including his infants, their mothers were here, everyone that lived on the strip was here, several Generations that lived just outside the fence were here, and several close friends of the family that lived on other planets were here. That made the vacation house a bit crowded and the compound a little loud and chaotic, but Jason was so used to that from home that it wouldn't feel right if it wasn't.

The last few days had been eventful for the Confederation, but he had strictly kept his nose out of it. Cybi was giving him daily reports, but she only gave him the bare essentials so he wouldn't worry. The peace treaty had been enacted on both sides, and now the Confederation and the Consortium were cooperating to enact the treaty's provisions. The Consortium had already begun ferrying their civilians over to Galaxy A5A-1, where the receiving planets already had substantial populations of transients as they prepared to move on to their permanent homes. The Consortium was handling the welfare of their population, where the Confederation was _only_ supplying the Stargates and Nexus bridges to get those people out of Andromeda. Everything going on in A5A-1 was the Consortium's responsibility, and from Cybi's reports, they were managing it fairly well. They'd established sufficient housing and food services for the people on the transition planets, keeping them in good health as they waited for a transport that would take them on to their new home. On those destination planets, they would immediately roll up their sleeves and get to work, for there were virtually nothing there. Every civilian would help rebuild their civilization, and they'd do it literally from the ground up.

The Consortium had done many evil things, but Jason could not fault them in one respect; they _cared_ about their people. That was something that the Syndicate did not do.

The mission to intercept the colonization force was almost ready to launch. The _Tianne_ was going to tow a Verutan heavy battleship out into flat space, where interdictors had already been carefully placed so the full interdiction field would just _barely_ sweep over the colonizing force just before it reached full power. That would knock the entire fleet out of hyperspace simultaneously, would prevent ships from potentially crashing into each other, and then the Consortium energy being aboard the Verutan ship would make contact with the colonizing force. Once the colonizing force fully understood what was going on and was on board with the plan, the _Kinai_ would tow in a Stargate, they would link it, and then the colonizing fleet would traverse over to A5A-1 and immediately spread out to their new planets. Since they were carrying colonization equipment, everything the people aboard ship would need to establish new cities, they could get right out there and get to work.

So, that was all going smoothly in the first few days of its execution, and since he was staying as far away from it as possible, it was a worry that had been taken off of his shoulders.

The last six days had provided no movement as far as the Syndicate went, at least mostly. Two more megacorps had selected their new CEOs, which crept them closer and closer to having the necessary quorum to reform the Board. The only news of note there was that the two new CEOs were ones that Kraal said were in favor of a permanent peace treaty, so that was good.

Kraal felt that more of them would be in favor of the treaty once they read the debriefing report from Gen. His friend had completed his debriefing and had been assigned a new squadron of riggers, and was serving out the remainder of his enlistment as a squadron commander assigned to E Chaio. That kept him right there in case the Board wanted to talk to him, but also put him back where he belonged, in the cockpit of a Marauder. Much to Jason's relief, they hadn't reprimanded him or punished him for cooperating with them. In fact, he'd been given a medal for bringing them so much valuable intelligence, for tricking his opponents into divulging so much to him. But what he'd told them, Kraal reported, had made the Syndicate military feel completely justified in assassinating the Board to stop them from escalating the war against the Confederation. Gen made it clear to them that the Confederation had only sent a _fraction_ of their available military resources to Andromeda, which had steamrolled the Syndicate and thrown their entire galaxy into military, political, and commercial chaos with their interdictor blockades of important systems, the taking of their most heavily fortified system, Atrovet, and the capture of the Dreamers, taking away their Oracles. And he made it abundantly clear to them, in stark, direct terms—which wasn't easy to do in the Benga language—that the Syndicate would _lose_ if they escalated the war against the Confederation. He told them about the Karinne plan to wipe out the invasion fleet in flat space between the galaxies, and the plan the Confederation had to cripple the Syndicate to such a degree that they could never threaten their galaxy again. He stressed vociferously the massive technology gulf between the Consortium and the Syndicate, telling them about the amazing technology he'd seen during his stint as a consultant that made the Syndicate look like backwater rubes, and couldn't warn them enough that the Confederation was an _intergalactic power_, capable of crossing over into Andromeda at will and wreaking havoc, while their home territory, the Milky Way, was completely unreachable by the Syndicate with the Confederation able to ambush and destroy invasion fleets in flat space between the two galaxies. He stressed how their superior technology more than made up for the sheer number of ships the Syndicate could field, and that was a lesson that they'd experienced enough to take to heart. Kraal said that many Syndicate military experts were completely rethinking their entire strategy after seeing a Megatron unit take out one of their super-ships. The sheer size of those ships was their strongest protection, but against the Karinnes and the Confederation, it had been reduced to _nothng_ by their superior technology. The Syndicate's best military minds were even now considering a complete reorganization of the fleet and a drastic change in military tactics, because they had been shown in a harsh manner just how weak their military really was.

Size was not strength.

What they had was enough to beat the Consortium, at least when they had the Oracles. But now, they knew that any future wars would be against a foe that could decimate their forces with tiny devices that could easily be mass produced in overwhelming numbers, and victory would never again be guaranteed.

Kraal reported that when the Board did reform, the military was going to do everything it could to ensure that they accepted the peace treaty…and if they didn't, then they had plans to remove the Board _again_. It had been the military that killed off the last Board, so they'd have no qualms about removing this one as well.

And now that Gen had been assigned back to a warmech squadron, Jason was hopeful that he could see him soon, just as soon as things settled down. He still had his Benga bionoid on E Chaio, and it wouldn't be that hard to arrange to meet somewhere on the planet and just hang out for a while. Gen was his friend, a very good friend he'd come to learn once he left, and Jason worried about him quite a bit. Seeing him in person would make Jason feel much better.

So, with those two big problems looking to get worked out in the due course of time, Jason could admit that he felt much better about things…or maybe it was just him getting the chance to kick back and relax, letting Cybi run things for a while. Either way, the last few days, Jason had felt better and better, up to the point where he almost felt back to his normal self. The feeling of foreboding was still there, but it wasn't nearly as bad as it had been just a few days ago. Now it was a nagging sensation that things _might_ go wrong, not that they _would_ go wrong. And he could live with a _maybe_.

But that wasn't going to stop him from milking this vacation for everything it was worth. He hadn't left the compound since arriving five days ago, but he'd be going out tomorrow morning to tour the first city they were building here, Alaria. After the tour, he'd be bringing Dreamer Elders back here in groups and talking to them, and he was going to visit several villages over the next several days to see how they were doing. He made sure to keep his work forays to a minimum, give him plenty of free time every day to relax and have fun.

It occurred to him, Cyvanne had named the high elf capitol in Citadel Online Alaria. She'd honored the Dreamers by naming their city after the race in the game that most resembled them.

But work was intruding in a couple of ways, and the most obvious of which was opening his eyes and seeing Grand Emperor Shakizarr hovering near the grill, watching intently as Seido grilled him a steak. Shakizarr was wearing a pair of knicker-like swimming trunks and nothing else, his black hair and green and black fur wet from the pool. It said a lot that he'd come here and just go swimming like a normal person, his honor guard dispersed throughout the complex along with Aya's guards, but Dahnai often joked that Jason had that effect on the members of the Council. Even the stuffiest, most arrogant member of the Council couldn't help but let their hair down a little bit when around him…and he guessed he couldn't refute that. But then again, while Shakizarr was all for formality and haughty appearances in public, when he was in private, he _did_ like to go "casual," as it were. It wasn't the first time the Verutan Emperor had sat around a table at Jason's house wearing swim trunks and eating steak.

In that way, he was like Dahnai. In public, Dahnai was the Empress, but in private, she liked to just be herself.

The difference today was, Jason got his first real look at Shakizarr's heirs. Verutans had more than one child at a time, so the first born litter of Shakizarr was here. They were all about nine years old as Jason would reckon things, three boys and two girls that looked completely mystified about what was going on. They'd been in training to be the potential next rulers of the Verutan Empire since before they were weaned, and they were in no way prepared for being exposed to Jason's family and the complete lack of rules or discipline that surrounded him. They didn't know what to do, they didn't know how to just play like children, standing in a group and watching everything going on around them with wide eyes and very nearly fear in their expressions.

There were five of them, but only one would be the next Emperor (there was no "Empress" in their language, so a female would be called Emperor). Shakizarr would not name an heir, either. When he died, the five of them would compete for the throne through a series of rituals and tests, and whichever of them was the smartest, the most cunning, and the most deserving would win. That ensured that only the best sat upon the throne. But it wasn't a death sentence for the losers, much to Jason's relief. The four losers would retain their nobility and would serve their sibling as military officers and still have a whole lot of money and power, but Verutan law disqualified them from ever taking the throne. That prevented a sibling from assassinating the Emperor to try to take the crown; in fact, if an Emperor was assassinated, then all his siblings were immediately put to death whether they had anything to do with it or not, to ensure that future siblings didn't get any bright ideas. So, the five heirs to the throne were very competitive with one another, but they didn't see each other as enemies to remove.

Grand Admiral Hezivarr was Shakizarr's brother. Jason didn't know that until just a few months ago. And it explained a whole lot about Hezivarr's personality.

The one thing most people overlooked when it came to the Verutans was their intense loyalty to the throne. The four losers would serve the throne dutifully and to the best of their ability because the winner proved he was the best choice. That was one of the things taught to the cubs as they grew, that losing the competition for the throne was not a disgrace, was nothing to be ashamed about, and that loyalty to the Empire was more important than personal feelings.

If Jason remembered correctly, Shakizarr had two other siblings than Hezivarr, and all three of them withdrew from the challenge to allow Shakizarr to take the throne, because they knew he was the best choice. Then again, Shakizarr was a truly exceptional man, so exceptional that even his siblings could see it and knew what was best for the Empire.

Over the last few days, and over the next couple of takirs, Jason was going to have more Council members here. They'd come in small numbers, just one or two, and carefully matched up so they were with other rulers they personally liked, and while they were here, they'd have the opportunity to relax a little bit outside of the public eye and talk about the future of the Confederation. Jason was doing everything he could to keep everyone in the Confederation, trying to get things lined up so that if the Syndicate signed the peace treaty, the Confederation stayed together. After all, at that point, the Confederation's reason for existing would be no longer. He was determined to make sure that all the empires in the Confederation saw far more benefit in staying in it than they did in leaving it, and access to other galaxies was Jason's biggest club. He was quietly making it clear to everyone that if they wanted to expand beyond the Milky Way, the _only_ way to do it was to stay in. Only Confederation members would be granted access to the Stargates leading out of the galaxy.

But at least they'd have two new members. Much to his eternal relief, both the Pai and Muri had officially been accepted into the Confederation just yesterday, and Jason's first act was to extend an invitation to the King of the Pai and the Ruling Council to visit Tir Tairngire and have a conference. Because the Confederation may be losing members very soon, Jason's primary motivation was to get their system well protected just in case a former ally suddenly tried to invade them. Both races had tremendous potential and power, and Jason wanted them under the protection of the mutual defense treaties of the Confederation. They were scheduled to arrive tomorrow, where Shakizarr and Gau would be leaving tonight.

It was about time to break that ice, he could see. He got up and padded over to the five nervous kittens, looking longingly at the three nannies that had come to chaperone them, but had been told to leave them be out here so they could get some exposure to Jason's family. He knelt down behind them, which startled them a little bit, and put his hands on the shoulders of two of them. "There's no reason to be so nervous," he told them in flawless Verutan. "Your father brought you here to have fun. So go have fun," he told them.

"We don't know what we're allowed to do," one of them ventured. Jason was still learning their names.

"In this place, as long as you don't leave the meadow, you don't break anything, and you don't aggravate or hurt any of the animals, you can do just about anything you want," he told them.

"Can we do that?" one of the females asked, pointing at the yard beyond the pool deck. There, several of his kids were having a race using toy Wolf fighters, merged to them and flying them around a course of hovering buoys and rings.

"Well, that would be a little hard for you to do, since you can't merge to the racers," he admitted. "But if you want to try your paw at flying one of them, I have some that have manual controllers and a VR visor. You'll see through a camera on the racer, so you can fly it around. Does that sound fun?"

"Yes! Can we try it, your Grace?"

"Jason, cub, Jason," he chuckled. "If I'm not wearing my formal robes, don't call me 'your Grace.' I'm not big on formality. And yes, you can try it." He rose up a bit and looked to the side. _Surin, how many of the moleculartronic Wolf racers do we have with manual controllers? The ones we have for kids who aren't Generations?_

_ Eight, I think._

_ Perfect. They in the garage?_

_ Yes, Jason._

_ Can someone go to the garage and pull them out? Shakizarr's cubs are going to play with them._

_ I'm stationed by the garage your Grace, I'll take care of it,_ Mai called.

"In the garage over there, you'll find five more racers, and they have controllers and visors. Why don't you cubs go get them and take them out into the field and try them out?" he suggested. "One of the guards is in there, and she's getting them ready for you. And once you've got the hang of flying them, you can challenge my kids to a race," he added, inciting the Verutan competitive spirit.

"We don't know how they work," the tallest of the males said.

"Around here, that's only an excuse for someone who's lazy," he said lightly. "The only thing stopping you from learning how they work is being afraid to try. Zach!" he called.

"Yeah, Dad?" he called form the pool, where he was playing with Dara and Danelle.

"You and Dara have played with the racers using the controller before. Mind showing the cubs how they work?"

"Sure, Dad," he said.

"I don't mind, Uncle Jason," Dara agreed, the two of them moving towards the ladder to get out of the pool.

"There, Zach and Dara will show you how the controller works. They'll have you flying them around like pros in no time."

"But we might break them. You said we aren't allowed to break things."

"The racers are built of armor quality metal and are built to military specs. You're _not_ going to break them. And if you do somehow pull off a miracle and manage to do it, I absolve you of any punishment," he declared. "And I'll tell you what. If any of you manage to beat my kids in a race, I'll let all of you keep the racers," he said in a conspiratorial voice, leaning down and saying it right at their head level.

That got them. They all but ran towards the garage, where Mai was already getting the toys down and ready for them.

"Are you bribing my cubs, Jason?" Shakizarr accused playfully as he walked over.

"Just giving them proper motivation to go have fun," he replied with a smile. "I know how it can feel sometimes to be strangers around so many others, to be an in an unfamiliar place around people who all know each other, not knowing what to do. Them getting involved with the racers should break the ice with the kids. Besides, I know how to motivate a Verutan. Make it a competition," he chuckled.

"You know us well," the Grand Emperor chuckled. "And thank you for trying to get them to socialize."

"They don't get chances like this very often, no way was I going to let them just stand in a cluster and do nothing all day."

Jason decided it was time for a little boring work, so he and Shakizarr sat at a table at the edge of the deck, they were soon joined by Gau, and the three of them discussed the future once the Syndicate was defeated. And much to his delight, he heard what he wanted to hear. Both Shakizarr and Gau had no intention of leaving the Confederation, they found the arrangement far too beneficial to leave, and were making some grand plans on their own about the future that involved exploring other galaxies and establishing themselves in the galactic cluster as intergalactic powers. And that was the best case scenario. The Verutans and the Haumda were the two largest and most powerful empires in their sector, and if both of them stayed in the Confederation, the rest of them would also stay in in order to remain competitive…and to be protected _from_ the Verutans and the Haumda. The Verutans were a highly aggressive empire, their only real fault, with expansionistic tendencies. Shakizarr's main goal as Emperor was to expand the Empire in both size and power, and now that he was armed with Confederation-level tech, it made his military exceptionally powerful. Thankfully, he was envisioning expanding the Empire through colonization, not conquest, and his actions backed that up. The Verutans had been one of the most aggressive Confederation powers when it came to exploration of the Magnum Dwarf formation, he'd sent out _thousands_ of scouts to explore the formation to find systems worth claiming. Shakizarr envisioned an empire spanning galaxies, with thousands of star systems under this flag, making them one of the most formidable powers in the cluster. Even in peace, the Verutan way was to be strong, because strength dissuaded others from war.

Jason could appreciate that point of view.

That conversation lasted about three hours, then Shakizarr and Gau decided to relax for a couple more hours before they left, mainly because the cubs were now fully engaged with Jason's kids. They were all playing in the meadow beside the pool. Shakizarr showed his parental mettle by delaying leaving just to let his kids play a while longer. They stayed over for dinner, giving Jyslin a chance to meet Shakizarr's cubs when she arrived from her office at the Paladins office, and when that was done, both of them left. Jason didn't read reports, he didn't get anywhere near his office in the vacation house, he played with the babies and the girls up until they went to bed, played a board game with his older kids until they went to bed, then he decided to mess around in Cyvanne's masterpiece a little more just for fun while Jyslin, Symone, and Tim watched a bachi match on the viddy, a D league match pitting the Sarinda Brigade against the Jerama Lightning. For Tim and Symone, it was for fun, but Jyslin was assessing some D-league talent by watching them in action. The first day of the new season was fast approaching, and while the roster for this season was set, owners and GMs of IBL bachi teams never stopped scouting talent.

Jason was on vacation, but Jyslin was not. This was the exact worst time for an owner to take a vacation, with her team in preseason training camp and the first game of the season coming up in just a couple of takirs. So Jyslin was going to work every day and coming to the vacation house when she was done, which was some odd hours given Tir Tairngire and Karis had very different day lengths. Tir Tairngire had a 25 hour day and Karis a 29 hour day, so Jyslin was showing up at the vacation house at very different times every day.

And being here was a good experience for the kids, who, because of who they were, had to get used to dealing with different day cycles. It was hardest on the toddlers, since they needed a set schedule, but so far it had been working out. They'd managed to establish a new schedule for the toddlers, where the babies didn't really care. Being on Tir Tairngire almost felt like being back on Terra…and he found it to be almost _alien_. He'd lived on Karis local time for ten years, and his circadian rhythm was now completely attuned to a 29 hour day. He almost felt like he didn't have enough time in a day to get things done here on Tir Tairngire, because it was four hours shorter.

So, while Jyslin was watching bachi after spending all day watching her team practice bachi, Jason's mind was in an entirely different world, a world invented by Cyvanne that was getting him more and more engaged by the day. He'd spent several hours so far playing in the closed alpha of Citadel Online helping Cyvanne test things out. He'd stuck with his Jagaara character, but had switched it from being a melee warrior to a warrior/magician hybrid, using his real world fighting skills in combination with the magic skills he had picked up in the game and was now focusing upon. He was helping them test quest functionality, including the quest generation AI that could invent quests on the spot to offer to players. Cyvanne had designed two different quest systems, the scripted quests that all players could do, and also a system that created new quests spontaneously based on player activity or exceptional role-playing with the NPCs. In the game, it paid not just to talk to NPCs, to get to know them, become their friends, because an NPC could spontaneously offer a player a new quest. But activity could also trigger a spontaneous quest. If a player spent a long time in one place, exploring or searching for something, the AI that governed quests could generate new quests for the player that involved that area, to give them something additional to do other than what they were doing. That ensured that even if a player never left his faction's territory, he would _always_ have something to do.

There was another kind of spontaneous quest Cyvanne called a "bonus quest," which dealt mainly with players interacting with NPCs and solving problems. If a player did an exceptional job role playing with an NPC, it triggered a bonus quest, which was really nothing but a reward for doing such a good job. The other aspect of it was that if the player found a truly creative and ingenious means to satisfy a quest objective, like finding a clever way to rescue an NPC from a monster, he would get a bonus quest as an extra reward for his ingenuity.

Quests were worth doing in the game, because they awarded the three things any RPG player wanted most: money, experience points, and gear. Not every quest offered gear as a reward, but enough did to allow the player to gear up to get him ready to take on the next, more difficult questing area, allowing the player to progress in both skill improvement and gear to move through the questing zones in his faction territory. It was all designed to get them ready for neutral territory, which was where things got much more dangerous. Once you were out there, other _players_ were as much a danger as the NPC monsters. And players had an incentive to kill other players, because you could take all the money a player was carrying if you killed him. You couldn't take his gear or equipment, but you could take his money. And there were quite a few quests that involved killing players on other factions.

That did run the risk of the game becoming dominated by player killers, so the game had a balancer in it to prevent it from devolving into that kind of scenario. Jason hadn't messed with it yet, but the "revenge system" Cyvanne coded into the game was supposed to allow someone who was killed more than once by another player to be able to fight back and kill his killer much more easily. Cyvanne designed the game to allow a certain amount of player against player drama, but not allow it to take over the game.

Seriously, Cyvanne had done such an incredible job on this game, he was astounded anew every day at how the game grew and evolved through its alpha testing.

This was the newest phase of the alpha test, the questing system. All the play testers, which included the game devs, most of 3D, MRDD, and people from about ten other research offices and departments in the Science Division, were running around doing the quests to test their functionality, making sure the quest tracking system worked properly, quest chains were working properly, and the spontaneous quest generation AI was kicking in where Cyvanne thought it was appropriate. Jason was one of the players testing the questing in Golden Lion faction territory, doing selected quests at random all across faction territory to make sure they worked, and if they were part of a quest chain, that the next quest in the chain was offered. He'd had a ton of fun doing it, finding a few bugs and notifying Cyvanne, but really just enjoying just being in Cyvanne's imaginary world. Here he had no responsibilities, he could do what he wanted when he wanted, and death only lasted as long as it took to reincarnate in the nearest graveyard, then make the "run of shame" as he ran naked back to his corpse to retrieve his gear and equipment.

And naked meant _naked_ in this game. Since it was merge only, that meant only adults and Generation kids would be playing it. And Generation kids were raised with Faey moral standards, so they saw nothing wrong at all with seeing someone naked, or being naked themselves.

Jason had found quite a sweet spot in the game as far as playing was concerned. The game's rules were set up so people who were primarily spellcasters, like him, couldn't wear heavy armor because the metal interfered with the flow of magical energy or whatever crap Cyvanne made up to balance magic against melee fighters. But where the game's rules restricted his ability to wear armor, his _real world_ skills made up for that when it came to protecting himself. Jason's real world abilities in Aikido and his military hand to hand combat training made him downright nasty in a melee fight, and by the time most monsters and NPC enemies got close enough to threaten him with a weapon, he'd already hit them with two or three combat spells to soften them up. So, the poor slob got pounded by magic trying to get close enough to kill him, and when he got there, he found himself up against someone who could take him on sword to sword…or sword to claw in his case, since he preferred to keep his hands free to use magic and rely on Claw and Fang to do his damage. That mix of magic and fighting prowess made him pretty damn formidable in the questing he'd done so far, since Jagaara had enhanced physical stats and their skills and abilities were geared around being a melee fighter, which meant he could dish out some punishment in hand to hand combat. He knew that that advantage was going to get lesser and lesser as he moved into the more advanced questing areas, where the monsters were tougher and he started getting equipment that boosted his stats, but at this stage of the game, his Jagaara physical bonuses were combining well with his Spellcasting skills and his real world skills to make him nasty.

In this game, a player character could be anything they wanted, so Jason had taken his very physical Jagaara and turned it into a magician…just a magician that could kick your ass if you got close enough to threaten him with a sword, thanks to his real world skills learned through his military combat training.

Cyvanne highly approved of his approach. She saw him as doing exactly what she wanted players to do, _be clever_.

It wasn't long before the server got much more noisy. There were about 120 people on right now alpha testing the questing system, all of them in a special comm channel created so they could talk to each other about any bugs they may find, and that number steadily increased by fifteen as the kids started logging on to play. Jason had allowed the older strip kids to join the alpha testing, so after the match was over, the kids started jumping on to have fun in Cyvanne's masterpiece. The kids were all playing on other factions, Rann and Shya on the Silver Blade, faction which was all the way across the continent, but he could talk to them in game through the friend system. Shya had opted for a wood elf, a very Faey-like race, but Rann had followed in his father's footsteps and decided to play something completely different from himself, and had chosen an Ursok. Ursoks were inspired by the Haumda, being very large and bear-like, and an excellent choice for someone who wanted to play a melee warrior type. Each of his kids were on a different faction to help test gameplay in those faction territories, each of them picking a race they thought was cool, but they were all friended with each other in the game's social system so they could talk to each other while they played. That kept them off the debug channel, where they'd be nothing but a distraction to the alpha testers. If they found a bug they said so in their friend channel, because Cyvanne was sitting in on the channel as well. And to be fair to the kids, they were taking their job seriously. Sure, they were having fun, but they were reporting any bugs they encountered like they were supposed to.

They weren't just alpha testing the game. Sami, Yuri, Jari, Latoiya, and Mike Junior were testing a special VR adaptor they were developing for non-jacked players that would _only_ be available to players on Karis, because it utilized their old interface technology…really just finding a use for the interface sensors that were taking up space in warehouses. The VR unit would allow them to see and hear through their avatar, and if they wore a special sensor suit, it would let them feel through it as well, the sensation of touch transmitted to the player from the suit and into the skin. That was _Kimdori_ technology, the suit would sync with the wearer's nervous system and transmit sensory data through the skin, but it only worked for the sense of touch. The unit did nothing for the senses of taste and smell, so it meant that a VR player playing a Jagaara couldn't utilize Enhanced Smell, and players eating food in the game wouldn't taste anything. The interface unit would allow the player to control their avatar as if it were their body, just like the old interface system they used in exomechs and the one they installed in Gen's Marauder. And since it was biogenic tech, it would only be sold on Karis, to people who didn't have jacks, including kids. Though the game was meant for adults, kids on Karis had the right cultural exposure to handle the game's mature themes.

Using the VR unit would put a player at a disadvantage, but if they really wanted to play and wouldn't get a jack for whatever reason (a jack was cheaper than the VR unit), the option was there.

It was kinda weird and made him feel a trifle self conscious playing the game as a magician. He had to chant the words of power to use the spells like magicians in movies or other games, but he had to memorize those spells himself in order to use them. The game's magic system had its own language, and held 1,731 "words of power" that could be combined to create every spell in the game. The spells starters used only had one or two words to use, so they weren't hard to learn. But the stronger the spell, the more words it had, and thus the longer it took to cast and the greater chance that the player messed the spell up or had the spell interrupted by an enemy he was fighting. And you couldn't whisper or mumble them either, you had to speak them in a strong, clear voice. And the pronunciation had to be perfect, or the spell would fizzle, or even worse, misfire. So, Jason sometimes felt a little silly calling out words in a made-up language, but the effect made the embarrassment worth it.

That was because there was more to it than just the words. Cyvanne had somehow managed to program into the game the requirement that the caster _concentrate_ on the spell in order to make it go off. Just saying the words wasn't enough, you had to _mean it_ in order to make the magic happen. It had taken him a while to figure that out, which was something every player that bought a magic skill would have to do. And it went beyond that. Spells that had variable parameters relied on the caster's imagination and intent to set those parameters. That meant to cast a spell with an area of effect, Jason had to decide where the center of that effect would be and how big the effect was, out to the limits of the spell. He could make the effect smaller if he wished, to avoid hitting an ally for example, which would matter if he was in a group. Members of his own group could be hurt by his magic, so he had to be very careful how he used his spells or he might end up killing his own group members. Luckily, though, Cyvanne had designed the magic system to allow casters to have a great deal of control over the spells to allow them to avoid hurting their own companions, but also retained an element of risk that made magic inherently dangerous to _both_ sides in a fight. She wanted magic to be powerful, but also _dangerous_, to force the players to respect that power and use it wisely.

He sometimes felt that only Cyvanne could have pulled something like _that_ off, designing a magic system in a game that relied on the player's ability to concentrate on the magic he was casting in order to make it work correctly. It was almost as if she brought _real_ magic into the game.

However, he almost felt it might be too difficult for many players to master, but Cyvanne had a lot more faith in the future players of her game than he did. And if he turned out to be right, well, she could fix it in just a day or two.

Still, it was a lot of fun. For a Grand Duke on vacation, distracting himself with alpha testing the game had been very relaxing. And he wasn't alone for very long. After about an hour of playing solo, a lithe, beautiful high elf wearing a mixture of leather and chain mail armor and carrying a bow reached him. That was Jyslin, who must have finished with her paperwork for the team and had logged on to play. She liked the game too, and it was no surprise she chose a high elf. There were four different elf races in the game, primarily to appeal to Faey players that wanted something _pretty_ to play, so naturally she went with the elf race on the faction Jason had chosen for his alpha test character. Jason and Jyslin were the primary players testing the quests in the Golden Lion faction, so it was like they had an area the size of New Jersey back on Terra to themselves.

That was how big the Golden Lion faction territory was, but it was a territory the size of New Jersey on a continent the size of South America. The five player factions of Arca only accounted for about 12% of the area of the continent, making the rest of it neutral territory. Cyvanne was anticipating that there may be tens of thousands of players on a single server, so she made the game world absolutely _huge_ so they weren't stepping on each other's toes. A server could comfortable support a population of up to 50,000 before things got too crowded, since players had so many options as to where they wanted to go and what they wanted to do. Some places would become very popular and crowded, but that was a design feature, not a potential problem. Certain cities and locations in neutral territory were explicitly designed to be attractive to players to give them a chance to gather in one place and socialize, meet new friends (and perhaps new enemies), and support a player-driven economy by giving players who focused on the financial side of the game someplace to sell their goods to a large number of players.

But that would be much later in the game's progression. For the start of the game and to make it easier for new players, all four player capitol cities, where new players would start, were within 60 kilometers of one another. The rest of the faction's territory was filled with smaller towns, villages, farmsteads, and lots and lots of NPC monsters for them to fight.

Each faction would have one really big city that would serve as the hub for the faction's players, which would give ample opportunities for players to meet, greet, and trade. In the Golden Lion faction, that city was meant to be Freeport. It was the largest of the four faction capitols and centrally located, making it easy for the other three races to reach.

"Finish the forms?" Jason asked in Elvish as she jogged up to him. She'd selected an avatar that didn't look like her but was still beautiful, with silver-gold hair so long it reached her knees, which she kept in a single long braid. Her chain mail hauberk managed to show off her cleavage, which was no surprise. Jyslin was a Faey, and Faey loved to show off their goods..

"Yup, and that's the last of them until next season," she answered, nocking her bow. "And how much did you get done without me?"

"Not much, mainly just dicking around," he answered. "I avoided finishing the quests we both have so we could do them together. I was mainly just killing stuff for fun and profit, seeing if I could raise my skills higher without spending experience."

"Nothing wrong with that," she winked with a smile. "Get anything good?"

"Nah. I did get one gear piece to drop, but it's a pair of plate gloves. Neither of us can use them."

"Yeah, I can't wear anything heavier than leather on my hands, and they can't cover my fingers," she nodded. "And you can't do magic with metal gloves."

"You can," he teased.

"Only elven chain mail," she countered. "And you seen how expensive that stuff is? I don't really get that rule in the game. Why do I get to wear metal armor and still use magic?"

"Because you're the magic race in the faction," he replied. "And you can only wear enchanted elven chain, which like you said, is expensive. It keeps magicians from getting too much armor. They're meant to be glass cannons, love, they hit hard but they die fast. A high elf magician decked out in magical elven chain mail would be a whole lot harder to kill, so Cyvanne made sure that that wouldn't happen until much later in the game, when players have very high skills and raid quality gear."

"That's the point, being able to kill stuff without any danger."

"You have a lot to learn about games like this," he told her with a chuckle.

They spent nearly three hours questing in an area called the Twilight Glade, which was east of Twinfang in what was considered Jagaara territory. Jason and Jyslin were doing the questing out here, while the other testers on the faction were testing out the questing for the other three races. It was nearly two hours' walk from Twinfang and a good half hour from the closest faction village, and out here, some of the drawbacks of the game became glaring, because they'd have to walk back to that village to log out. Jason didn't like how Cyvanne had done the log out system, but she wasn't going to be moved, she considered it one of the challenges of adventuring far from a city or town. You couldn't just log out in the game and expect everything to be just as you left it when you logged back in, because while you weren't in the game anymore, your avatar _was_. It would be exactly where the player left it, and if some monster wandered by, they could easily kill the player while he wasn't there. The only way to completely log out of the game was to do it in an inn or in a player-owned house, be it the player's own or a friend's. Only if you logged out in an inn did your body "disappear" from the game world, meaning you were completely safe. Players who ventured far from an inn had to plan for how they were going to log out, from strategies like hiding their bodies to using magical spells that would create a safe zone that would allow them to log out. Luckily, Jason had picked up a spell that did that, called Create Shelter, but it required a Transmutation skill of 150 to learn and cast, and his skill was only 123. He'd mainly been working on Transmutation before Jyslin logged on to get it high enough for him to be able to log out anywhere.

Jason was certain that that spell was going to be one of the most sought-after spells in the early stages of the game, because it would allow players to log out from anywhere in the world. Cyvanne had planned for that as well, making sure that every faction had easy access to a Transmutation trainer and putting in enough beginner spells to allow a player to raise it to 150 relatively quickly.

Jason felt that the log out issue was going to be a major issue, but Cyvanne wasn't budging. She'd change it only after the game went live and the players proved Jason's point by complaining about it.

They spent a very fun three hours testing quests and killing monsters, getting some quality time together despite doing it in a game where he was a two meter tall muscular cat-man, like a much taller version of a male Jirunji (Jagaara were based mostly on the Jirunji), and Jyslin was…well, mostly just like herself but with pale skin. They didn't find any bugs during their play session, and they were even rewarded for their game time in the form of a new piece of gear. They got a bow off a random monster, part of the random bonus loot drop system Cyvanne implemented. Players could strip dead monsters of their gear and equipment, but most of it was usually damaged by the battle and was thus really only worth selling to an NPC merchant for money, or using as raw materials for their own tradeskills. But some monsters had extra pieces of equipment that wasn't damaged, and it was usually magical in some way. So, if they came across a lizard man wielding an iron sword, they could take that sword if they killed the lizard man. And if it wasn't too damaged in the fight, they could use it. Those pieces of bonus loot were easy to discern from the monster's equipped gear because it was awarded to the player through a loot window rather than stripping the corpse. To prevent things from getting too, well, ghoulish, Cyvanne had created the loot window system to give players the money and bonus loot on the monster, that way they didn't have to search the body. But if they wanted the monster's worn equipment and weapons, they could manually strip the corpse of them.

The bow Jyslin got was pretty solid…so solid, in fact, that she didn't have a high enough Bow skill to use it, nor did she have sufficient Strength to draw the bow. She had to hold onto it, and when she raised her Bow skill to 125 and her Strength to 25, she could use the bow. Raising Strength wouldn't be that hard for her, since most gear past the gear acquired in the starting areas increased a player's stats. She only needed two more points in Strength, and that was like one piece of gear quest reward.

After calling it a night, they sat on the balcony off the master bedroom and watched the planet rise, Jyslin snuggled against him on the lounger. _[I can tell you're feeling much better,]_ she intimated, communing through contact so no other Generation in the house could hear her.

_[Yes I am,]_ he agreed. _[I think if I wouldn't have taken this vacation, I might have had a nervous breakdown or something. Thank you for nagging me into it.]_

_ [It's my job to keep my man healthy and happy,]_ she replied lightly, sliding her hand across his chest. _[I'm just glad that at least half of the war with Andromeda is over. With luck, in a couple of months, the Consortium will be so far away from us that they'll never bother us again.]_

_ [And if we're really, really lucky, we'll have a peace treaty with the Syndicate not long afterward. Then we find out what happens to the Confederation.]_

_ [I don't think much will happen. It's far too profitable and advantageous to stay in it than it is to leave it,]_ she predicted. _[The largest empires are staying in for access to other galaxies, and the smaller ones will stay in because the larger ones stayed in.]_

_ [That's what I'm hoping,]_ he agreed, pulling her a little closer. _[And I'm seriously relieved the Pai and Muri decided to join. Most of the other members don't truly understand how special and how powerful both of them really are. The Pai may be much more flashy, but the Muri are the ones with the far more useful ability.]_

_ [How many Muri are in navigation training in the KMS?]_

_ [About fifteen hundred,]_ he answered with an audible chuckle. _[I want a Muri on every ship either in the navigator's chair on the bridge or down in Astrocartography. Their psionic ability makes them perfect for either job.]_

_ [Is that gonna be enough?]_

_ [No. We'll need about five times that to staff every ship we're planning to build. When we're done with the fleet expansion, the Karinne Navy is going to be nearly five times bigger than it is now. That should be large enough for the KMS to hold its own against the entire CCM, at least so long as every empire doesn't send every ship they have against us.]_

She was quiet a long moment. _[I hate that we have to plan to fight our allies.]_

_ [So do I, but I learned a hard lesson over the last five years, love. Our allies will turn against us the moment they believe they have more to gain from attacking us than they do from working with us. Zaa told me there's no less than twenty different plans or plots from various Confederate empires to acquire translight drive technology. The only thing stopping them from executing them is my threat to blast them back into the stone age if they try it. The only true allies we have in the Confederation are Dahnai, Sk'Vrae, Kreel, Krirara, and Enva. None of them are plotting to steal or capture translight drive tech. Just about everyone else _is_, including Shakizarr and Holikk. I'm not going to move against them for plotting, but I will if they try to carry that plot out. Zaa's Kimdori will keep us informed, so none of those plots will come at us by surprise.]_

_ [Thank Trelle for the Kimdori,]_ Jyslin chuckled.

_[You're a cousin now, love, so I can honestly say thank God for you,]_ he smiled.

_[You better, buster. I'm the best thing that ever happened to you,]_ she grinned, her boundless love for him radiating through her thought. _[And you're the best thing that ever happened to me. I think Trelle made both of us for the sole purpose of loving each other.]_

_ [Not gonna argue with that,]_ he demurred, leaning his head down against hers.

_Raira, 29 Kiraa , 4405, Faey Orthodox Calendar_

_ Tuesday, 13 August 2019 Terran Standard Calendar_

_ Raira, 29 Kiraa, year 1330 of the 97__th__ Generation, Karinne Historical Reference Calendar_

_The White House, Karsa, Karis_

Things had been going _too_ well. He was starting to get that nagging feeling that everything was about to go to hell again.

Leaning back in his chair, he worked through the last items in his inbox, preparing to leave the office for a rather important appointment, trying to shake off that feeling. He knew where it was coming from; after nearly three months, the Syndicate was very nearly ready to reform the Board, and that meant that the possibility of another war with them was starting to rear its ugly head.The last three months or so had been quite peaceful, even pleasant, because the Consortium had behaved, had adhered to every provision of the treaty, and the operation to move as many of their citizens to Galaxy A5A-1 was almost complete. The only systems left to evacuate were the ones furthest away from the border with the Syndicate, the ones that had been under the least threat of invasion, and those operations were slated to be complete in about 14 days. The Kizzik had managed to evacuate nearly three _trillion_ civilians from Consortium space over the last three months, and absolute marvel of efficiency and organization. It was mostly the Consortium moving those civilians, but they were doing it by the schedules that Jrz'Kii and her logistics team had drawn up, and they were doing it because they realized quickly that the Kizzik knew her business. They were moving _four billion_ civilians a day from Consortium territory to A5A-1. That was nearly the population of a planet being moved, every single day.

They were doing it with _millions_ of ships. The Consortium was using absolutely anything that was spaceworthy to move people, from garbage scows to military warships, because Jrz'Kii had convinced Jason to install bridges at Consortium systems so any ship with a jump engine, no matter how old, could move civilians. But on top of those ships, they were moving civilians in hastily constructed "flying boxcars" that were nothing but annealed metal plates to form an airtight container and a crude life support unit inside to keep people from freezing to death during transit. It was those crude transport units that were moving the majority of the people, for they were putting upwards of 10,000 of them in at a time and then bringing it to Nexus Three, on a very tightly controlled schedule that ensured that the line to pass through the nexus gate was always full. As the processing bay emptied out of people, a new group arrived to refill the queue. They were moving 220 people a minute through the nexus bridges, 29 hours a day and ten days a takir. And on the other side, there was a continuous parade of ships without jump engines moving them from Nexus Four down to the planet that was acting as the starport to get them down to the planet.

The Karinnes and the Confederation were involved in the evacuation, but only in A5A-1. CCM personnel transports were assisting the Consortium in moving their civilians once they arrived, under the very strict provision that no Consortium military warship would enter A5A-1 while CCM transports were moving their civilians. Their warships were staying in Andromeda, pulling the double duty of holding the line against the Syndicate and moving civilians to the evacuation point.

For this entire operation, the Consortium had been nothing but polite and obedient. They obeyed every provision in the treaty, obeyed every additional rule set by Jrz'Kii and the CCM command staff overseeing the evacuation, and Jason could understand why. Their only hope to continue as a civilization hinged on being evacuated out of the galaxy, so they were doing everything the Confederation told them to do because they didn't want to mess this up. Jason said it before, but it held true that the only way he could give them some respect was that they sincerely cared about their citizens. They were trying to evacuate as many as they possibly could, because they knew what would happen to those left behind. They wouldn't be exterminated—they were worth more alive than dead to the Syndicate—but they'd become slaves to the Syndicate megacorps.

_Literal_ slaves. That was what the Syndicate did to Consortium civilians they captured. They had to serve as indentured servants for ten years to "buy a sponsorship" and join Syndicate society as a sponsored citizen. They had to endure ten years of the most grueling, humiliating labor in the most horrid conditions in order to get a contract with a megacorp, a process many didn't survive. Even though Jason saw the Consortium as an enemy, he didn't see their _civilians_ as his foes, so he had authorized the KMS to support the evacuation effort.

The Consortium civilians had nothing to do with what they did in their galaxy, and an innocent life was worth trying to save.

So, that operation was moving smoothly, and Jrz'kii projected they'd be finished in about 14 more days. The civilians were leaving with only what they could carry in a single suitcase, forced to abandon virtually everything they owned, but they were doing it willingly and gratefully. They'd have their lives and their freedom, and that was worth losing mere things.

The nervous part was the Syndicate. They'd been advancing into Consortium territory as their naval forces abandoned each system, and after realizing what they were doing, they'd not been pressing deeper in. They saw that the Consortium was giving up those systems, and all they had to do was wait for them to clear out and "conquer" them without firing a shot. But now that the Consortium was down to having operational control of only five star systems on the very edge of Andromeda, Jason was worried that they might launch an offensive before the last of the civilians could be evacuated. They had no idea of what the Consortium was doing, they believed that they were stuffing those people on colonization ships and sending them out of the galaxy. They believed that because Gate Paragon and Nexus Three were outside the galaxy, at a location about five minutes' jump beyond the galactic rim. They had to keep it close because they couldn't put all those civilians in stasis for an extended jump, so the gate location was concealed by an armada of Kimdori SCM units. They were in a line with the Milky Way galaxy, so any Syndicate ship that saw them jump out would assume that they were being sent over to this galaxy, following the colonization fleet that launched a couple of years ago.

That was the military. The political side of it was coming to a head, because they only needed one more CEO to be named to have a quorum to reform the Board. And when they did so, the first order of business would be deciding whether or not to accept the Confederation's peace treaty. That treaty was very simple and very straightforward: military hostilities would cease, and Confederation military assets would not enter Syndicate territory. That was it. No conditions, no provisions, no pages and pages of legalese filled with loopholes. Well, there were _two_ loopholes, but it was one that the Syndicate wouldn't easily see. The first was that since Prakka was not Syndicate territory, it was exempt from that clause of the treaty. The Syndicate couldn't claim it was their territory because they couldn't reach it. The other was that while there would certainly be military assets in their territory, they would not be _Confederation_ assets. They would be a private paramilitary force run by the Kimdori and the Karinnes whose mission in the public eye was to defend the transports and freighters of their corporation. The Syndicate would have no idea that that company was controlled by the Kimdori and bankrolled by the Karinnes.

Yeah, Kumi was _not happy_ when she found out how much money Jason had committed to the project. It actually put them into the red for the fiscal quarter, something that had never happened before. And if there was one thing that absolutely infuriated Kumi, it was _losing money_.

Kraal's latest report said that they would reform the Board sometime within the next one or two days, and then they'd debate the peace treaty as their first order of business. And the peace that they'd enjoyed the last few months would hinge on their decision. Kraal was optimistic about it, since many of the CEOs selected to the Board were in favor of the peace treaty, for various reasons. Some wanted nothing to do with the Confederation, taking Jason's warning to heart. Some saw war with them as unprofitable, and thus not worth pursuing. Some wanted to focus on the Consortium, achieving ultimate victory over them and dividing up the spoils of their newly captured territory. But, there were some that wanted war, mainly those whose arrogance wouldn't allow them to accept the fact that they'd lost against the Confederation, and it was how many of those that managed to get into the CEO seats of their respective megacorps that would determine if Jason would be back in his Titan running combat missions.

He'd be doing some training today, but not in a Titan. He'd be doing it in a Wolf. It was time for him to renew his combat certification for a Wolf, so he'd be going up to the carrier _Brian Fox_ after he finished here and doing the PIM segments of the certification exam. He chose for two reasons, one because the squadron with which he was going to do his certification was stationed on the carrier, and two because he was going to drop in on one of the newest Wolf pilots in the Karinne Navy, one Lieutenant Aura Karinne. She'd finished her initial flight training just five days ago, and was now on her first real training assignment aboard the _Brian Fox_, assigned to the 1023rd Combat Training Squadron aboard the carrier. She'd spend three months in that squadron learning basic tactical maneuvers and group tactics, doing so in a real-world environment of being on a carrier. She'd be training using both the Wolf fighter and the Nova fighter, and once she passed the very same rating exams Jason had been taking over the last few days, she'd earn her fighter pilot's insignia and be assigned to a fighter squadron.

Jason already knew which one, Juma had told him. If she passed her training (and her scores indicated she was going to pass easily), she'd be assigned to the 303rd Carrier Squadron aboard the _Aldu Nor_, which was commanded by Ravai. Aura didn't know Ravai, so Juma felt it was best to station her aboard a ship where she didn't know her captain personally. And for Aura, who lived on the strip and had so much contact with the upper echelons of the KMS, it wasn't easy to find a captain she didn't know.

The 303rd used both Wolf and Nova fighters, and was one of only about 10% of Navy fighter squadrons that had both fighters assigned to them. Each pilot had two fighters, a Wolf and a Nova, and they used whichever one best fit the mission…though that was going to change when they got more fighter pilots trained. Right now they had something of a shortage of pilots, so they had something of a luxury of having multiple mecha assigned to them. But when the fighter corps' numbers got up to where Juma wanted, pilots would only have one mecha, and their secondary mecha would become another pilot's assigned fighter.

The Navy's numbers of Nova fighters grew by the day. After seeing what those little fighters could do, Juma had ordered a few thousand more of them. They were a perfect complement to Wolf fighters, and having both of them in a combat theater was a major advantage. They were even faster than Wolves, much more maneuverable, and since they'd managed to miniaturize a disruptor to mount into the fighter, it was just _deadly_. It didn't have the raw firepower of a Wolf, but it exceeded its big brother in dogfighting scores because of its insane speed and maneuverability. Juma had assigned Novas primarily as fighter interceptors, their job was to engage enemy fighters and bombers while Wolves either did the same or were assigned to attack line vessels. Both Wolf and Nova fighters were now being assigned to most routine missions, such as recon, gunboat escort, CAP (fighter defense), and bomber interception. The only missions Novas didn't do that Wolves did was line vessel assault and ground assault, though they were capable of attacking line vessels thanks to their disruptor gatling cannons. Wolves had much more firepower and thus were much more effective attacking line vessels. When it came to ground assault, Wolves were far superior, which was why Sioa hadn't ordered nearly as many Novas for the Army as Juma did for the Navy and Marines. The Novas that Sioa ordered had the mission of air superiority, taking out enemy air assets and giving the Wolves, corvettes, and gunboats the opportunity to make ground strikes unimpeded. Army Novas were strictly dogfighters, who went in and cleared out the enemy's aerial assets and established control of the airspace over a battlefield. And in that job, they excelled.

Jason had done his rating exams on a Nova just two months ago, so he didn't have to do those again. His passing scores would be carried over into the rating scores for that side of his rating exam. He'd be doing today's tests in his Wolf, which had been picked up from the pad behind his house and taken to the carrier for him to use. That was his personal fighter, and while he'd never used it in combat before, it was kept at combat readiness at all times…just in case. The tests weren't that hard, he just had to prove he remembered how to fly his fighter and that he remembered all the basic commands when operating in a squadron. He'd be flying with the 182nd Carrier Squadron, the Rebels, and doing a training mission with them was part of his rating exam.

The Rebels were something of a rarity in the Navy, it was an all male squadron, made up mostly of Faey and Terrans. Most of the Faey men were like Jenn, they were damn proud of being fighter pilots and they flew with a massive chip on their shoulders, much the way Jenn chafed at how his sister Jezzi always tried to put him in a box and keep him safe. The Terrans had inherited the same attitude from their Faey compatriots, since they'd also tasted the sexism Faey women displayed when it came to men fighting. They just had the added indignity of being treated like that when they weren't raised in a female-dominated society. They were one of the elite Naval squadrons, with some of the best pilots in the Navy, and they had an expectation of excellence that drove them far more than other squadrons because they always felt like they had something to prove.

In reality, they did. Even Juma had major issues with _men_ being in combat roles in her Navy, but she had no choice but to accept it with gritted teeth. The Rebels were out to prove to the women that men could be just as good at fighting as they were, so their squadron commander demanded that the Rebels have the highest scores in the Navy. They fell short of that because of the Ghost Squadron, but they continuously tried to prove they were _better_ than the best fighter squadron in the KMS. That rivalry was good-natured, however, mainly because Captain Justin Taggart was a _man_. The pilots of the Rebels highly respected Justin both for his skills and for the fighter squadron he built…even if it was predominately women.

How good were they? If the Ghost Squadron wasn't available for an extremely important mission, they sent in the Rebels. They were like the Red Warriors and the Banshees from the rigger corps, who were just one step below the KBB in their respective services (the KBB wasn't assigned to either the Army or the Marines, they were an independent entity that answered directly to the command staff in the chain of command). In the Navy, they were just one step below the Ghost Squadron.

Jason had flown with the Rebels last year for his rating exam by random luck, and he'd been so impressed that he specifically requested them for this year's exam.

Tickling Chichi under the chin a little bit, making her close her eyes and tilt her head up to encourage him to keep going, he finished the last couple of reports and the last bit of paperwork that required his attention, and checked the clock. He had about half an hour before he had to go, which wasn't really enough time to do much of anything but too much time to want to just sit around and wait. So, he spent that time playing with Chichi, giving her more than enough attention to hold her over until tomorrow.

Miaari walked in while they were engaged in a mock battle, Chichi cradled in one arm, on her back, making a game out of trying to catch Jason's hand when he darted it in to rub her belly. Catching his hand meant he _kept_ rubbing her belly, at least until he saw an opening and managed to escape from her little clawed paws. Chichi wasn't exactly gentle in their mock battle, as the light scratches on the back of Jason's hand attested.

He didn't mind. If playing with Chichi didn't result in a few scratches, well, he didn't play with her anywhere near the way she liked. She was a rough and tumble little tabi.

"Stop tormenting that poor tabi, Jason," Miaari ordered with a smile.

"Hey, I'm the one bleeding here, you should tell Chichi not to be so mean," he chuckled in reply, scrubbing his fingertips against her belly. She gave a little _rowr_ of protest and gnawed at one of his fingers. "Dropping off something routine, or are you here for a reason?"

"Here for a reason," she replied. "Can you ask Chichi to let you go?"

"Alright. Afraid play time is over, little girl, Miaari needs to talk to me," he told her, slowly pulling his hand away. He tapped her on the nose playfully and then shifted her around and settled her on his lap, stroking her black fur gently. "Alright, drop it on me."

"Fortunately it's not bad news," she told him with a bit of a chuckle. "The Board has a quorum. They'll be reforming tomorrow. What makes it not bad news is that the CEO we wanted has taken control of Dynamax Technologies. Kraal is confident that the Board will accept the offered peace treaty, at least after a debate over its merits. Those in favor of peace have a voting majority with the current quorum."

"The end is in sight," Jason breathed.

"It is," she nodded. "If we're lucky, by this time next takir, the war will be over."

"God, I hope so. What do you have on this new CEO?"

Jason had to reschedule his recertification exam, because this was more important. He and Miaari discussed what was going to happen over the next few days for nearly three hours, first getting a detailed briefing on the newest member of the Board, a surprisingly young Benga woman named Dai Su Jam Ber. She favored a peace treaty with the Confederation, mainly because Dynamax was one of the megacorps in a position to profit the most off a peace treaty. They discussed a few other new CEOs, and then discussed what tomorrow might bring. The Syndicate's rules demanded that the Board hold its first meeting within 51 hours of gaining a quorum if a quorum was lost, and they'd scheduled their first for about 33 hours from now. It would have about two hours of ceremony as the new Board members were formally seated—in a recently rebuilt Boardroom in their capitol building that had a ton of additional security features—the Chairman that would lead the Board was chosen by a public disclosure of net worth, with the largest and most valuable megacorp taking the Chairmanship, and then they'd get down to business. Kraal had managed to find out that the peace treaty was at the top of their agenda once they were back in session, because the threat of the Confederation restarting the war was something they could not ignore.

What made Dai Su Jam Ber an interesting choice was that she was one of the more visionary Benga. She chafed at the Syndicate's technological anachronism, mainly because Dynamax was a tech company that used far more advanced tech in their internal workings than the Syndicate did as a whole, and she wanted to bring the Syndicate up to Dynamax's level. With her supplying the tech, of course, making Dynamax ridiculous sums of tekk, but she had a point, and now the Board would probably be amenable to a sweeping infrastructure upgrade project. The Confederation had kicked their asses with a fleet a fraction the size of theirs—physically and numerically—because they employed far superior technology. They couldn't afford another disastrous war like the Confederation War, where an exo-galactic entity with far superior war capability invaded Andromeda and crushed the Syndicate. The war with the Milky Way had opened Dai Su's eyes to their vulnerability, and her main goal as a member of the Board was to upgrade the Syndicate's infrastructure and military capability to meet these new threats. And if she was smart and savvy, it would be Dynamax products the Syndicate would be buying to do those upgrades.

_[You coming home for dinner, love?]_ Jyslin called over the biogenic network.

_[Not sure yet, but I hope so. Something important came up,]_ he answered.

Cybi cut in. _[Not to ruin your dinner, Jason, but Sioa wants to see you. It's not high priority, however. If you have time today, fine, if not, tomorrow is also fine.]_

_ [Tell Sioa I'll see her first thing tomorrow,]_ he replied.

_[Alright.]_

"Pay attention, you silly man," Miaari teased.

"Sorry, Jys and Cybi asking questions. How likely is it that the voting majority for peace changes before the vote can be taken?"

"Slim. The remaining megacorps are still days, maybe takirs away from selecting a new CEO. There are outright wars being waged over the CEO position in twelve of the megacorps. The casualties have been high, to the point where entire boards have been killed off. Add that to the fact that the Board wants to get the peace treaty quickly to prevent further economic upheaval, and the outlook is quite favorable for us."

"Finally, some good news," he sighed.

"We deserve some after the last two years," she agreed. "I'll have everything put into a report and have it delivered to you."

"Done already?"

"There's little else we can discuss until the Board makes a move," she told him. "You may have time to get your certification mission done if you want."

"Nah, I've already rescheduled it for tomorrow," he said. "I guess I can go down and see what Sioa wanted before I go home instead."

"I'll have the handpanel delivered to the house this evening."

"Sounds good."

He tracked down Sioa in the command center before going home, and she took him over to the main console. "I thought you'd like to know that we finished the feasibility tests for the quadrupedal mecha concept," she told him. She touched her interface, and the hologram of a mecha built around the concept of a large cat appeared over the console. He had to dredge his memory a little to recall all the details. It was called a Warpanther if he remembered right, and he'd asked Sioa to reopen the project to see if it would be feasible with the artificial muscle strand technology they invented for Titans.

"And what's the prognosis?"

"I've ordered two prototypes built," she answered immediately. "The sims and data we got from a redesign of the mecha were _impressive_, Jason. It's four times faster than a Titan on the ground, has impressive firepower, its low profile makes it surprisingly hard to hit, and with the tech upgrades, it's highly durable and cost-effective. To build it, though, it's going to need a little more research. With your permission, I'd like to send this to MRDD and have them assign a research team to it, see if they can improve the design even more with the prototypes."

"I thought MRDD was doing it already?"

"They are, but it needs you or Myleena to make it project-level," she told him.

"Ohhh, okay," he said. "So it's going to take a little more tweaking to make it viable?"

"Not much, but if we promote it to a full project, it will get the love it needs fast enough to give us a viable prototype by the end of the year," she nodded. "There are two design concepts that need to be tested for the legs. One is muscle strand tech, but the other is a bit of a radical concept someone in MRDD thought up. Her idea is to use gravometric engine pods in the legs in place of muscle strand tech or standard mechanical drive tech."

"You mean have them move by pods? But how will the legs hold up the main body of the mecha if there's no mechanical system in them?"

"That was my question. There's _some_ systems in the legs to make them functional, but the main mode of movement for them would be grav pods. The system that would manage the joints would be very simplistic, easy to maintain and hard to break, while the grav pods would serve as the actual 'muscles' of the leg, providing the movement force. It's a bit hard to explain. I can have them send you the research on the idea, it explains it much better. That kind of tech is beyond my understanding," she chuckled ruefully.

"Bottom line it, Sioa. Is it worth spending the credits on a full-blown project?"

"Yes," she said immediately. "If the prototype can match the simulation data, it will be a formidable mecha in combat, and an excellent complement to all four of our current combat mecha. Our sims show that its combination of speed, agility, and a very low profile will make it very hard to shoot down."

"That's good enough for me. I'll notify MRDD to promote it to a full development project," he nodded.

"Then I think it's about time for both of us to go home," she said.

"So, how's married life treating you?" he asked. "Still in honeymoon phase?"

She chuckled. "It's been interesting," she replied. "All these years I thought I'd never get married. In some ways, I still think I'm too much of an old warhorse, but he talked me into it."

"You may not be the only one. Rumor has it that Ilia's on the verge of proposing to Melliken."

"He's such a nice boy. I think he'd be a good match for Ilia," she said with a smile.

"She'll be in for a bit of a surprise," Jason laughed. "Mell's a little bit of an impish scamp. He'd shake her highly regimented life to its foundations. I'd be happy to see it, though. For years I've been trying to get the girls to marry. It took how long for it to happen? Eight years? And _Meya_ of all girls?"

Sioa laughed. "The others have to get married now. Jyslin, Maya, Songa, Temika, and Meya have the high ground."

"Exactly," he chuckled. "I'm hoping a little petty vindictive competitiveness will drive a few more of them to the altar. And now that you've broken the marriage barrier on the command staff, I'd better see a few more wedding invitations."

"I rather doubt that," she grinned. "Myri and Juma are married to their careers."

"So were you," he pointed out.

"But I was _dating_. I don't think either of them so much as look at men."

"Well, I'm gonna fix that," he said with determination.

"It's entirely possible that they're _happy_ being single, Jason," she smiled at him. "Just because you enjoy the married life, it doesn't mean that everyone else will."

"Everyone is legally mandated to enjoy what I enjoy," he replied with insincere gravity, which made her laugh suddenly.

"Go home and stop causing trouble, you impossible man you," she grinned.

"I should, I have some reading to do tonight, and I always get it done fastest at my office at home. More than enough motivation to make me finish," he smiled.

He took care of Sioa's request when he got home, making the mecha a full research project and sending it to Myleena's office for her to assign researchers. She wouldn't be doing it herself, her staff would handle it, because Myleena was elbows deep in the new Project H, which was the Nexus Bridge project. The objective was to build a bridge that could be placed on a planet, or at least in a gravity well, and to just do general research into the theory and the technology to see what improvements could be made. She and Emia were anchoring the project, which involved 15 3D scientists and a good smattering of hyperspace physics experts from both the Research Division and MRDD. The project had just started, so they hadn't really started getting going yet, just settling into their research labs at MRDD headquarters on Joint Base Alpha and ramping up for their work. Despite that, Myleena and Emia had already done some work on the project and had reduced the overall power consumption of the bridge system by 12%.

The mecha project wouldn't be Project I, those kinds of projects were 3D projects. MRDD would assign it as Project 05-11, the Warpanther project.

It was just one of about 117 separate research projects going on by the many different research offices and departments that made up Myleena's Science Department. That was what the House of Karinne did, and they were _always_ starting new research projects. And it wasn't just the government doing it. Many corporations and satellite campuses of the Academy also conducted research, which was completely or partially funded by the House government.

There wasn't much more for him to do work wise but worry about the upcoming Board vote, so he distracted himself by going hoverboarding over the ocean off the beach with Aria. His adopted daughter had gotten stronger and stronger over the months since she finished her biotine treatments, but much more importantly, she got more and more graceful. The treatments could restore her muscle tone, but since she spent years laying on that slab, she'd had to all but learn how to walk, eat, and do basic movements again. She was proving more and more every day that she would eventually make a full recovery, because she didn't _ever_ like to sit down. She wanted to do, do, do, all day every day, to catch up on all the life she'd lost as an Oracle. All that activity was good for her, because she got more and more coordinated every day from her constant activity. As it was, she had regained enough control over her body to play organized sports in school. She wasn't all that good at them, but she loved to play sports. She was currently on both the school's baseball team and the track team, because she loved baseball and she loved to run.

And it was exactly what she needed. She still needed more therapy, needed to be active to catch up to peers her own age when it came to physical coordination, and playing organized sports was _perfect_ for that. Her coaches were teaching her how to control her own body, and that was all she needed to make a complete recovery.

She certainly had enough toys to keep her entertained in her outdoor endeavors. Jason and Jyslin maybe spoiled her a little bit with the equipment they bought her, letting her try out everything from ice hockey to sailboarding. If she wanted to try a sport or activity, they geared her up for it. Every activity she tried got her that much closer to full recovery, and besides, Jason felt that she _earned_ the right to do just about anything she wanted…at least within reason.

There were some sticking points, though. Aria was at that age in a Faey girl's life where she _really_ started to notice boys, and the fact that he was living in a Faey society was warring with his very Terran morals when it came to his girls. She was well into puberty, having developed breasts and hips since being put on the growth acceleration program that Songa prescribed for her, which was about two thirds of the way to getting her to what Songa felt was her natural height for her age. She was still shorter than most other girls her age, but she was still growing so fast that she outgrew any clothes not made of memory fabric in about two takirs.

It was a complete diametric opposite. In Faey society, girls were the aggressors, girls acted almost exactly the way boys did in Terran society when it came to the opposite sex. They chased boys, and when they caught boys, they _followed through_. But Jason had been raised with the very Terran morals of a girl doing the exact opposite of that. It was about the only thing that he and Jyslin fought about anymore, just how far to let Aria go when it came to exploring her budding sexuality…but that was a war Jason knew he was going to lose. Like it or not, the society of the House of Karinne, at least here on the strip, was more or less based on _Faey_ society. Other races' societies had tremendous influence in places where they lived, like the values of the Shio holding much greater influence on Sarga, but the rules and laws of society for the House of Karinne were more or less based on Faey societal norms. And in Faey society, a 15 year old girl was _expected_ to do everything in her power to lose her virginity as quickly as possible.

The problem there was that while Aria was 15 physically, _emotionally_, she was more like 10. She'd had no development at all while she was an Oracle, so she was like a child stuck in a pubescent teen's body. But, much to her credit, she'd handled the whole thing with a great deal of maturity, thanks to many long talks with Jyslin and Jason, whom she trusted enough to discuss such private things, or at least most of those things. Aria was aware of Jason's discomfort about discussing sex with her, given his diametrically different viewpoint from just about everyone else on the strip but Temika, Luke, and Mike, so she didn't talk about it to him. She saved those discussions for Jyslin…maybe because Jason would tell her to resist her impulses, where Jyslin would cheer her on. But she also did it because she didn't want him to feel uncomfortable, and for that much, he could appreciate her thoughtfulness. So, their conversation steered away from the fact that Aria had something of a boyfriend in school, or that she was immensely proud of the pink fuzz that was starting to grow south of her belly button—Jyslin had utterly corrupted her in that regard, she wasn't afraid to go around naked anymore—or that her breasts were more than just bee stings now. She was maturing, becoming a woman, and probably on an accelerated schedule because of the growth treatment Songa had her doing to get her to her natural height after having her growth stunted for several years.

_Careful,_ he warned as a small pod of Terran dolphins decided to swim past them. They'd only recently been introduced into Karis' ecosystem, and thus far, they'd done very well for themselves. Like the whales, they were disoriented for a couple of years and had to be carefully watched, but once they learned their way around, adjusted to the 29 hour day, and started to understand how the food cycle worked in the oceans here, they'd settled in quite famously.

_I love those things. What kind of fish are they?_

_ They're not fish, they're air breathing mammals. They're called dolphins, they're from Terra._

_ Oh, neat. I've always thought they were very pretty,_ she sent as they adjusted course a little to run more parallel to the coast after turning around and going back the other way. Aya didn't like them to board outside the boundary of the strip fence, so they usually just ran back and forth out where the reef was growing. That kept them inside the area of the hard shield if Aya had to raise it for some reason. _I wonder if they like it here._

_ We can always ask them,_ he told her, slowing his board to a stop, and kneeling down. "Hey, hold on a second!" he called, and the dolphins submerged, then surfaced in front of him, their heads out of the water. Even Terran mammals seemed to understand him when he spoke, as long as he spoke sincerely and from the heart. That was the trick of it, he'd come to learn after discovering this strange ability of his, what the _shaman_ said was his strength. "My daughter wants to know how you like living here in this new place," he addressed them as Aria circled around and slowed to a stop, sitting on the edge of her board, her legs dangling into the water.

They all started chittering at once, making it a little hard for him to pick out what they were saying. "At first, it was very scary," he told Aria, listening. "Nothing was where it was supposed to be, and we couldn't find anything. The places where we used to go to find food were gone. We didn't know what to do, and there were times when we went days without enough fish to eat, because we didn't know where they were. But we started to learn our way around. We watched, we studied, learned where the fish go and when they go there. It was scary at first, but now we're starting to understand this strange place. We like it here. The water is clean, the air fresh, very different from where we were." Jason looked down at the pod of about ten dolphins. "We had no idea it was so hard on you guys at first," he told them. "We're very sorry."

One of the dolphins gave a short chatter sound, which made him chuckle. "Well, I'm the only around here that can understand you," he answered. "And it's hard for me to be everywhere." His eyes widened when he heard another one. "Seriously? Huh."

"What, Pam?"

"They said that they employed a telepath capable of communicating with them when they brought them here. That was pretty smart," he mused. There were telepaths that could communicate with animals, but they were very rare. Obviously, the department that handled repopulating Karis with animals had tracked some of them down to help the animals acclimate to Karis.

One of them asked why they were moving them here in the first place.

"Two reasons," he replied. "First, to help this place recover from a terrible disaster that wiped out almost all life, a very, very long time ago. We needed to bring new life from other places to return this place to a natural state. Secondly, to move you from the place you were so it has a chance to recover after the Terrans living there polluted the environment, and give you a better chance to survive. Here, you're not going to be hunted by the men in boats, you're not going to get tangled in the nets they put out to catch fish, and you won't have to worry about unnatural objects floating in the water you might mistake as food. So, I have to ask…do you like it here?"

The answer was complex. They didn't at first, but as they learned more and more about this place, they grew to feel very much at home here. The pod was now thriving, and they didn't want to go back.

"I'm glad to hear that," Jason chuckled. "I'm sorry it was hard on you at first. We did what we could to help as much as possible, but I'm happy that you're happy here. I'm a lot like you. I came from the same place you did, and it took me a while to adjust to this place. To the days that were too long, the sun being the wrong color, feeling a little heavier, the moon that was too large and didn't move the way it was supposed to. To the stars all being in the wrong places. But now, this is my home, and I wouldn't want to live anywhere else. I'm now a child of this world, not our old one."

They understood _exactly_ what he meant. They felt they were now children of this new place as well.

"We'll let you get back to your hunting. Good luck," Jason told them.

The pod turned and swam towards the north, heading for the reef that was growing on that side of the strip's beach.

Jason repeated what they told him to Aria as they watched the pod swim away, and she gave a knowing nod. "That's how I feel. This wasn't where I was born, but this is my home now," she said simply. "I don't want to be anywhere else, not even Tir Tairngire. I like it there, and my people are always very nice to me, but it's not my home. This is."

He drifted over on his board, leaned down, and kissed her on the cheek. "Aww, I love you too, Pam," she said with a radiant smile up at him.

They stayed out for a while longer, at least until business intruded. The report from Miaari arrived, and he went up to his office to read it. It was a more detailed analysis of what they already talked about, including some background bio and profile information of the new members of the Board. Kraal sent quite a long profile of each of them, from the basic info all the way down to their preferred foods, and he worked through it to get a better understanding of these two. But what he read did give him a little hope for the future, because both were against escalating the war with the Confederation. One was against it because she felt it was suicide for the Syndicate, that they were no match for the Confederation with their current technology, and the other because he felt that escalating the war was not profitable for the Syndidcate in the long run. He was interested in _permanent_ peace, where the other one would be amenable to restarting the war once the technological gap was removed.

He would take it, either way. Once the Syndicate tasted a few decades of peace, and could only wage war through the tremendous effort of crossing over to another galaxy and taking on a galaxy they _knew_ was armed to the teeth with technology much more advanced than their own, it was his hope that they'd find peace more profitable than war.

That made him check the fleet realignment schedule. The four new fleets had been formed on paper, and they were starting to reorganize the entire Navy…but not into four fleets, but two. Since they only had two fleet flagships built, they were going to divide the KMS into two major fleets, and when the other two were built, divide them again into four, but those four fleets would be organized and ready long before they came into being. So for now, ships were being assigned either the Alpha or Beta fleets, but ships that would move to the Gamma and Delta fleets had already been selected and were just waiting on their fleet flagship to be built to move over. Ships were being assigned to the four fleets one by one, based not only on ship type, but on the strengths and capabilities of their captains. Juma wanted a perfect balance of ship captains with expertise in all four phases of operation necessary for command staff; tactical skill, strategic skill, diplomatic skill, and leadership ability. The perfect example of a top tier tactical captain was Sevi, she was an absolute nightmare in battle because she could see the openings and react to them much faster than most other captains. Because of her exceptional tactical brilliance, she would be the ranking tactical battleship captain in the fleet to which she was assigned, which would be the Alpha Fleet. The best example of a strategic captain was Edra, captain of the battleship _Zempali_. She was adept at seeing the "big picture," seeing beyond the short term tactical situation and understanding how actions effected things over time. Edra would be assigned to the Gamma Fleet, at least eventually. The best example of a diplomatic captain was Haika Medorre, captain of the tactical cruiser _Jomaki's Blade_. Haika could talk the scales off an Urumi, and she was calm, steady, and unflappable. She would ultimately be assigned to the Delta fleet. Leadership was a quality that all captains had to possess, but some were much more gifted in it than others, mainly through their personalities. The captains of the most famous ships in the fleet all shared exceptional leadership qualities, able to inspire their crews to excellence, but Jason felt that no captain personified that ability more than Mikano Strongblade. The crew of the _Javelin_ had absolute and utter faith in her, and they would follow her into hell if she asked it of them. A captain like Mikano turned a standard ship of the line into a force to be reckoned with. They could put Mikano on any ship in the fleet, and within three months, it would be one of the best of its ship class because of how Mikano inspired her crew. Mikano would be assigned to the Beta fleet.

There were several captains like that, and all of them shared Mikano's leadership qualities. Palla, Haema, Jeya, Salira, Kiya, Marayi, Koye, all of them inspired fierce loyalty from their crews, and it wasn't just because they were good at being captain. They all possessed that intangible quality that made soldiers and sailors want to follow them, want to excel because their captain expected it of them. Mikano was just one of them that wasn't captain of a flag-level ship. But she would be, there was no doubt about that. Mikano was the Shio version of Jeya, a highly gifted officer and woman born to command a ship, and would probably be sitting in the big chair on a battleship the instant she met the time in service requirements commanding smaller vessels. She very well may go straight from a frigate to a heavy cruiser.

Jason had felt that putting Jeya on a command ship that early had been a mistake, but he was man enough to admit that he was wrong and Juma was right.

Jeya's exceptional abilities were going to serve the KMS well, for Jeya was one of the two command ship captains chosen to command one of the fleet flagships being built. She didn't know it yet, but she and Kiya would be promoted to command the two new flagships, Jeya being taken off the _Pegasus_ and Kiya off the _Aegis_. Koye Karinne was being promoted to take over the _Pegasus_, and Marayi was being promoted to take command of the _Aegis_. Jeya was already youngest admiral in the KMS—the captain of a command ship was a Fleet Admiral by rank—but she'd soon become the youngest Flag Admiral in the KMS.

Jason had full confidence in her. Her performance on the _Pegasus_ had been nothing but exemplary, and he knew she'd be just as exceptional on the bridge of a fleet flagship. The KMS valued ability over just about everything, and Jeya and Koye had proved that they were the best choices for promotion up to a fleet flagship, despite both of them being young as admirals went.

He missed dinner to finish reading the report, nibbling at what Seido brought up to him while he was working, and when he finally finished, he spent the evening playing with the girls and the babies before it was bedtime for them. He went back to the kitchen for a late snack before bed to find Seido chopping vegetables for something she was going to cook tomorrow, and he couldn't help but be a little nosy. _So, have you seen Merra lately?_ he asked.

_I talked to her just a little bit ago,_ she replied, a bit curtly.

_Talking to her isn't _seeing_ her, silly,_ he chided.

_If you must know, we're going to go on a date tomorrow,_ she replied. _She's coming over to Karsa so she can try one of my favorite restaurants in town._

_ So, when are you going to bring her home and introduce her to the family?_

_ You've already met her, Jason,_ she sent firmly.

He had to laugh. _Yes, I went over and had a talk with her, because I didn't want her to get discouraged,_ he replied honestly. _I didn't want her to get away from you._

_ I can handle my personal life, Jason,_ she accused.

_I know you can. But you also know I'm a nosy dad, and I think she's such a wonderful woman that I'm not going to let get away from you. With chains if necessary._

She gave him a bit of a surprised look, then smiled a little. _I think that might give her the wrong idea,_ she noted lightly.

_Oh, I dunno, she might find them a bit exciting,_ he winked.

_Don't be like _them_._

_ Oh? And just exactly _who_ is he not supposed to be like, Seido?_ Jyslin challenged from upstairs.

_Did you _have_ to augment her talent?_ Seido asked him acidly, which made him laugh.

_If I knew then what I know now, I might have told her no,_ he grinned at her, which made her laugh.

_Oh, is that so?_ Jyslin challenged. _I think you just don't like being put into your proper place of _under me_, buster._

_ I outrank you where it counts, bitch,_ he teased in reply. _Now shut up and let me talk Seido into bringing Merra home to meet us._

_ Pft. Seido, bring Merra over after you go out so we can meet her. There, was that so hard?_

Seido gave him one other adorable annoyed looks, rolling her eyes.

"She's Faey, she just doesn't get it," he said aloud with a grin.

"Truth," she agreed.

"So, think Merra won't think you're going too fast if you bring her over to meet us? Just a few minutes, you can swing by as you take her back to the starport."

"I'm going to go get her in my skimmer, then take her home," she said, looking a trifle embarrassed. "It's cheaper than her taking a transport."

"Nothing wrong with that," he told her. "But that's an hour over and an hour back."

"Well, it gives us time to talk, I enjoy her company," she told him. "And tomorrow's my day off, so I'll have the time."

"True. And I'm sure you'll be glad to know that Merra meets my approval," he said with a growing smile. "Her boobs are just big enough. They meet with my stamp of approval."

Seido gave him a startled look, then burst into helpless, delighted laughter.


End file.
